Danny

Seville?

Oh mate I’m with you, but Sky apologise everytime you hear swearing come through. Micing the ref up will be their worst nightmare lol

Premier League will never mic a ref up with the way players speak to them. Recipe for disaster

I tuned in yesterday morning to the grand final and saw the Broncos running away with it, thought I’m on holiday I’m not gunna sit in doors to watch them run away with it. Saw on my phone this morning that the Panthers made a come back and that Clearly won it for them. For fuck sake

I’d like to know how much City actually wanted Ronaldo or whether it was a ploy to draw United into signing him. Makes no sense from their perspective to actually be interested.

Lisbon is really nice and going straight to Albufeira feels like being in an episode of black mirror. The beach is great in Albufeira, if you stay out of the main town then things feel fine (i.e playing golf) but the town itself, the shops and restaurants catered to Brits Abroad, terrible.

One thing I will say is, a little over a year ago United were going through their worst (or one of) seasons in my lifetime and that forced a managerial change. There was massive cracks being papered over by OGS and his low point tallies in relation to league position that were revealed by the arrival of Ronaldo. Since then United have still kept the majority of the players who were around then and they’ve also suffered a lot of injuries this season. To top that off United were atrocious beginning of last season, good in the middle and then nearly fell off at the end coming close to giving Liverpool 4th. Until the squad is changed as a whole and a plan is followed, this pattern will just keep rearing its head. But with all of that said how they’re handling Sancho and also Greenwood is cause for concern. Would love to know how thats gone down in the dressing room.

The cultural difference between a few days in Lisbon and then finding yourself in the strip in Albufeira must be similar to the feeling of coming off heroin

@Devil-Dick Willie next time your bottleshop puts a BBQ on chuck a sausage at her head when shes not looking

Send her a message saying she could have at least sent you some Gusto instead

What is funny is that this “the media are out to get him” approach completely ignores the fact that near enough the entire professional comedy industry in the UK have stories about him, people who are not well known, have no profile and have no reason to “clip his wings for flying too close to the sun”. It is not a masterminded hoax, it is a collection of peoples lived experiences being made public.

Pretty horrible viewing and I hope there’s some sort of justice for the victims out there somewhere. But the reality is there won’t be hence going public. He’s going the Tate route of garnering an online following that will support him no matter what. Pathetic.

I think TAA must be the preferred option behind Bellingham. At least I hope so

Tbh I think there was a patience to Scholes’ games that Gerrard didn’t have. Technically he could do it all but much the same with Xabi Alonso, I don’t think Gerrard could do that position better.

Was a good interview, I think if anything it just highlights how different a player they were. You would group Scholes with a Xavi or a Pirlo, but I think it’s a remnant of how bad it was to support England back then, not just players competing against each other but fans too. I think we were also held back by rigid formations of the time, Scholes back with Carrick in a 2 man midfield with Gerrard ahead would have been unreal. Both players performed in the same formation eventually for United and Liverpool.

Glad to see Schade get a call up, he really has the tools to become a top level striker. To have his size and physique as well as his pace, he creates so many problems for defenders. His finishing needs to improve a but the signs I’ve seen are that he could become a really good goalscorer

Between his actions at Ajax and recently with Greenwood, you’d find it difficult to trust a man’s judgement like that.

So Nketiah, Eze, Maddison, Wilson, Saka, Kane, Foden, Rice, Bellingham, Colwill, Dunk, Guehi, Tomori, Chilwell, Johnstone, Pickford aren’t players who are in good form and have been picked for that? Honestly it’s such bullshit that he doesn’t pick players on form. He has justified Phillips’ inclusion and quite fairly, we only have two players who can play as a single pivot, Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips. James Ward-Prowse would not be competing with them for a starting position because he is not a defensive midfielder, he would be competing with Gallagher, Bellingham, Maddison and Henderson. Southgate is the most successful England manager of our lifetime and has achieved that by consistently blending new talent/performers with consistent performers. It was Southgate who introduced Maguire, Rice, Phillips, Mount, Grealish, Saka, Sancho and Foden into the team after performing well enough at club level. He’s now introduced Trent, Guehi, Maddison, Tomori and Toney into first team action too.

It's a lose-lose situation because then the issue is you have people who haven't played the game or refereed up close making decisions like that, and that will cause drama at some point. The issue we have now, literally spoke about in this thread is the speed in which they want to make decisions (there's also been arguments made that the refs should be sent to the screens more for some obvious issues) and that all comes from complaints that it was too slow and breaking the game up when it was introduced. Difficult decision to get right, I thought the Fulham goal was interesting as the ref seemed to make a valid point about the offside. But I still think the goalkeeper not knowing if the ball will bounce off the player effects their decision making and so it should have been called. But the decision they made, that sort of thinking isn't spoken about publicly.

As did Southgate at his presser.

You telling me you didn't stick your shield on, pick up your sword and conquer your missus when you first met her?

I'd be happy to watch a trilogy fight between the two, both struggled physically in different fights, it'd be good to see them both at the races together. @JoshBRFC makes a good point about Eubank not taking Smith out, his power never really used to be a problem for him. I think Eubank will move onto the Benn fight as another loss kills that fight, maybe Kell Brook too. But I can't see anything happening between him and triple G, would be good to see him come back to this fight.

That was a masterclass from Eubank, didn’t expect that after the first fight. Fair play

Problem UFC has is they have very few stars in the sport that transcend the sport. Boxing has problems with getting the big fights all the time, but the way the sport is set up means a fighter can grow beyond the sport itself. Difficult to do that in the UFC.

Summer transfer window complete. We have essentially sold David Raya to Arsenal for £30m which was a good fee in the end considering how long he had on his contract, I wouldn't say that Flekken is better or even as good as Raya is, but he does cover all bases that Raya covered and I think he will turn into a pretty good signing for us. Pontus Jansson left the club to join his boyhood club Malmo and so we replaced him with Nathan Collins. It's difficult to replace the leadership quality that Jansson brings to the defence, that will need to be done collectively as a team. But as a player Nathan Collins is a real upgrade, what has surprised me is just how good Collins is on the ball. He will be encouraged to play with the ball at his feet a lot and will also be asked to carry out attacking duties too. The one thing that has stuck out with Collins is his ability to step-up high up the pitch, collect a loose ball and immediately play it out to a winger or a more advanced midfielder. He acts almost as a second defensive midfielder at times when we have the ball, specifically with his range of passing. It's a massive boost to our possession style and hopefully will help us pin teams back this season. We have sold other players like Mads Bidstrup, Sergi Canos, Halil Dervisoglu and Mads Bech Sorensen but none of them were really getting any game time. Specifically it's a shame to see Mads Bech leave as he was pretty instrumental in us getting promoted, we suffered a heavy injury crisis at the centre back position and even though he was about 200-300 appearances behind the person he was replacing, he mostly played pretty well. Last season was difficult for him on loan, hopefully he can make a career for himself in Denmark now. Our other two main signings were Kevin Schade on a permanent transfer and of course king of the shithouses, Neal Maupay. Schade impressed from January onwards last season and his goal against Palace is a real example of how dangerous he can be, he definitely improves our attacking line and adds much needed pace. Neal is an interesting signing, we don't normally make signings based on nostalgia and I don't think this is one of those signings. He's generally guaranteed to score about 10 goals a season which is good for a back up striker, but I think the intention is to try and get a lot more out of him. His xg is pretty good, it's just a matter of making sure he's confident and getting the team to get the best out of him. With the likes of Schade, Mbeumo and Lewis-Potter on the wings I don't think that'll be that hard. For his sake I really hope he has a good season and proves a lot of the critics wrong, there was a great player in him when he was with us in the Championship. Overall it's been a good window, slightly disappointing we didn't land any of Brennan Johnson, Azzedine Ouhani or Johan Bakayoko but that is just the club trying to be ambitious. It's difficult to compete with clubs the size of Spurs, Marseille and PSV for their players, especially when they have Champions League football in the case of PSV. The key thing for the club alongside a good transfer strategy is player development pathways, that should obviously be a key thing for all clubs but we have seen that it doesn't really exist at clubs like Chelsea or Forest for example. We have a host of players in Schade, Lewis-Potter, Mbeumo, Janelt, Damsgaard, Hickey, Collins, Henry, Olakigbe and Yarmolyuk for example who all have varying levels of potential to step into and the club are really good at giving players the chance to do that. I think the team as a whole has improved on what we had last season and we will wait and see what happens to Ivan Toney in January but I get the feeling we will bring him back in for the remainder of the season. I think it'll be difficult to achieve a European spot this season, but I do think we will be there or thereabouts fighting for that Europa Conference League spot.